Welcome to the Mr. Local History Project
“A 501c3 Non-Profit Dedicated to Preserving and Promoting Jersey History with a Social Twist”
The Mr. Local History Project is about bringing New Jersey’s past into the present through the stories of real places, real people, and real communities. Focused especially on New Jersey history, the project celebrates local history in a way that feels personal, engaging, and relevant, not something locked away in textbooks, but history that lives where we live. As we head into 2026, the 250th anniversary of the United States, Mr. Local History is turning history into a shared experience. With a social twist, this is about connecting online and in the community, sharing memories, spotlighting hometown stories, and honoring New Jersey’s outsized role in America’s founding. It is history you can explore, share, and be part of together.
Today in America’s History (We Update Every Day)
- 1824: The Marquis de Lafayette, the last surviving French general of the American Revolutionary War, arrives in New York and begins a tour of 24 states.
- 1843: The Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu, Hawaii is dedicated. Now the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu, it is the oldest Roman Catholic cathedral in continuous use in the United States.
- 1915: A story in the New York World newspaper reveals that the Imperial German government had purchased excess phenol from Thomas Edison that could be used to make explosives for the war effort and diverted it to Bayer for aspirin production.
- 1942: World War II: Operation Pedestal: The oil tanker SS Ohio reaches the island of Malta barely afloat carrying vital fuel supplies for the island's defenses.
- 1959: American Airlines Flight 514, a Boeing 707, crashes near the Calverton Executive Airpark in Calverton, New York, killing all five people on board.
- 1965: The Beatles play to nearly 60,000 fans at Shea Stadium in New York City, an event later regarded as the birth of stadium rock.
- 1969: The Woodstock Music & Art Fair opens in Bethel, New York, featuring some of the top rock musicians of the era.
- 1971: President Richard Nixon completes the break from the gold standard by ending convertibility of the United States dollar into gold by foreign investors.
- 1977: The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space; the event is named the "Wow! signal" from the notation made by a volunteer on the project.
What Can You Do Today to Celebrate America’s 250th?
Our Readers’ Top 10 MLH Posts this Week
Latest Posts
Noe Pond – Chatham’s Swim Club People Remember
Views: 27 Noe Pond began as a natural, spring-fed farm pond on the Noe family’s roughly 800-acre property in Chatham Township. Dating to before the Revolutionary War, the pond supplied water to the family’s dairy farm, rose greenhouses, and surrounding…
Millington’s Millridge Swim Club Bulldozed Back into the Great Swamp Landscape
Views: 117 Before the Millridge Swim Club existed, it was known as Reggie’s Playland Farm, and we found a strange real estate listing from 2002 that read: This story is part of the Mr. Local History Project’s New Jersey Swim…
Westfield’s Rialto Theater History and Next Chapter
Views: 90 UPDATE: A New Life for Westfield’s Rialto After sitting largely dormant since closing as a movie theater in 2019, Westfield’s historic Rialto is now headed toward a major rebirth. In July 2026, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority…
Celebrating 100 Years of the Cranford Theater
Views: 397 As Cranford prepares to celebrate the theater’s 100th birthday on November 29, 2026, we’re taking a look back at the little movie house that became a Cranford institution, and the generations of people who have kept coming through…
NJ Cinemas Honored in Exclusive Miniature Wooden Collection
Views: 8,062 Remembering classic movie theaters that not only showed first-rate films, but anchored our towns and kept us full of memories. Three of the last remaining old-time, downtown movie theaters in New Jersey, each with over a century of…
History Remembers Lost Swim Clubs – Now It’s Your Turn
Views: 415 For many families growing up in the Somerset Hills and surrounding communities, summer meant one thing: the local swim club. From the 1950s through the 1980s, private clubs, lakes, beaches, and municipal pools became summertime gathering places where…
Looking Back at Millington’s Clover Hill Swim Club
Views: 1,266 Clover Hill Swimming ClubA Beloved Summer Retreat That Changed New Jersey History This story is part of the Mr. Local History Project’s New Jersey Swim Club Series, exploring the neighborhood pools, freshwater ponds, and private clubs that shaped…
Reggie’s Playland: A Forgotten Jazz Club in Millington, NJ
Views: 1,401 Our story begins as we were researching another story tied to swim clubs in New Jersey’s Basking Ridge area, and we were preparing a story about Millington’s Clover Hill Swim Club. A fun story you can read later,…
Windsurfing On the Columbia River Gorge in the 80s
Views: 856 Before kiteboarding, before wing foiling, and before extreme sports filled television screens, there was windsurfing, and nowhere captured its spirit quite like the Columbia River Gorge. Throughout the 1980s, this remarkable corridor between Oregon and Washington became the…
Remembering the Columbia River Gorge’s Wind Ranch in the 80s
Views: 1,713 Ah, who remembers the Wind Ranch in Bingen, Washington? Just across the bridge from Hood River was a place, no, an iconic place, that remains now only in my memory. This post is more of a community plea…
1780: The Missing Cemetery at the Basking Ridge Continental Army Hospital
Views: 246 For decades, visitors to Jockey Hollow believed they were standing beside the burial ground of Continental soldiers who died during the terrible winter of 1779–1780. However, archaeological investigations found no human remains, and the National Park Service now…
Our Summer 2026 Magazine is HERE!
Full of great local Jersey History to keep you on the edge of your history seat.
Special Edition – America’s 250th The SEMI-QUIN-CENTENNIAL is HERE!
See our special digital magazine. Full of great local Jersey History.